[GUI Plugin] Kindle Collections (old)

[CRussel]

Bug?
With current Collections plug-in, I edit my collections information in Calibre and then use Create to send the collections information to the Kindle. Works well, with exception of the feature request above. But when I switch to a Device view in Calibre, those collections are not reflected in the Collections column. Which is a nuisance. Is this a plugin issue? Or a Calibre issue? Or just something to live with and get over?

Thanks,

[meme]

Originally Posted by Ajax

Thanks a ton for all of your work on this plugin meme. It's great to be able to manually update my collections from the PC, or auto create if I want to.

You're welcome

[meme]

Originally Posted by CRussel

Bug?
With current Collections plug-in, I edit my collections information in Calibre and then use Create to send the collections information to the Kindle. Works well, with exception of the feature request above. But when I switch to a Device view in Calibre, those collections are not reflected in the Collections column. Which is a nuisance. Is this a plugin issue? Or a Calibre issue? Or just something to live with and get over?

Thanks,

Its an issue with Calibre. Working on a patch, but its a little trickier than it seemed at first. The issue is Calibre doesn't have the code to use the ASIN numbers in a book so it can't identify collections for any Amazon books or books that have been updated by Calibre to include a fake ASIN to allow syncing. That part is easy. Getting Calibre to cache the data so it doesn't take forever reading all the files each time is the hard part

[meme]

Originally Posted by CRussel

Feature Request: Currently, if I import (Add) a new book to Calibre, and set the Collections column for the new book, when I then send that book to my Kindle, it doesn't put the new book in the collection, but leaves it out at the top level. It would be nice if the process of sending to the Kindle would also put it into the correct collection(s).

This might be a bit difficult. I'm not aware of any way to hook into calibre's Send to Device function to call a plugin. I'll ask though.

But even if the function could be called, it would mean that for every book you sent the create collection function would be called and you'd have to wait that much longer (as you know creating collections isn't instant). But I suppose if its an option, then you'd get to choose if you wanted to wait

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by meme

I suppose if its an option, then you'd get to choose if you wanted to wait

Yes.

Seriously, this isn't a big deal, just a "would be nice to have".

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by meme

Its an issue with Calibre. Working on a patch, but its a little trickier than it seemed at first. The issue is Calibre doesn't have the code to use the ASIN numbers in a book so it can't identify collections for any Amazon books or books that have been updated by Calibre to include a fake ASIN to allow syncing. That part is easy. Getting Calibre to cache the data so it doesn't take forever reading all the files each time is the hard part

Yes, I definitely would not want this to have to read every file every time. Though I would have thought(?) that the JSON file had all that you'd need, since Calibre has already identified which files are on the device and in my library (hence the little green checkmark.) But I am not a programmer, and no longer even pretend to play one on the Internet.

[mataichiblue]

Hi--I've been using Calibre for a while but just grabbed the newest version of the plugin to check out. However, whenever I try to use it, I get the following error message or something like to for every action:

calibre, version 0.8.3
ERROR: Unhandled exception: <b>ValueError</b>:unconvertible time

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "calibre_plugins.kindle_collections.ui", line 160, in edit_kindle_collections
File "calibre_plugins.kindle_collections.kindle_edit_co llections", line 68, in run
File "calibre_plugins.kindle_collections.kindle_boo ks", line 36, in init
File "calibre_plugins.kindle_collections.kindle_boo ks", line 59, in __init__
File "calibre_plugins.kindle_collections.kindle_boo ks", line 93, in load_kindle_books
ValueError: unconvertible time

Can you tell me what I'm doing wrong?

[meme]

What version of the plugin are you running? What OS?

From the error and line number it looks like the plugin had problems getting the time of a file, and didn't handle it well.

If you are able to run in debug mode then you might see what book is causing the issue (if its just one book) until I can update the code to trap this error. If you can run commands from the command line try "calibre-debug -g > out.txt" and then look at the end of the file out.txt when it stops.

[mataichiblue]

I'm running

Microsoft Windows XP
Media Center Edition
Version 2002
Service Pack 3

with

Plugin Version 1.6.3

I ran the debug command line, but nothing turned up---I may have done it wrong, as I'm an end user, not a programmer.

[meme]

@mataichiblue - try this version. It should print a warning message that you can see if you select Show Details when Edit/Preview/Create/View Report is finished. If its just one file then the Edit window will still show all the other books - but it would be interesting to know if there is anything special about the file. If its every book with an error, then maybe you can try to disconnect/reconnect the Kindle/restart calibre.

[mataichiblue]

I installed the plugin from the above message and restarted Calibre. I then attached my Kindle and clicked on the option for manually editing the Kindle. The 'show details' section was this:

calibre, version 0.8.3
ERROR: Unhandled exception: <b>ValueError</b>:unconvertible time

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "calibre_plugins.kindle_collections.ui", line 160, in edit_kindle_collections
File "calibre_plugins.kindle_collections.kindle_edit_co llections", line 68, in run
File "calibre_plugins.kindle_collections.kindle_boo ks", line 36, in init
File "calibre_plugins.kindle_collections.kindle_boo ks", line 59, in __init__
File "calibre_plugins.kindle_collections.kindle_boo ks", line 93, in load_kindle_books
ValueError: unconvertible time

then I tried Previewing Collections and got

calibre, version 0.8.3
ERROR: Unhandled exception: <b>ValueError</b>:unconvertible time

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "calibre_plugins.kindle_collections.ui", line 145, in preview_kindle_collections
File "calibre_plugins.kindle_collections.create_preview ", line 35, in preview
File "calibre_plugins.kindle_collections.create_preview ", line 70, in create_kindle_collections_main
File "calibre_plugins.kindle_collections.kindle_boo ks", line 36, in init
File "calibre_plugins.kindle_collections.kindle_boo ks", line 59, in __init__
File "calibre_plugins.kindle_collections.kindle_boo ks", line 93, in load_kindle_books
ValueError: unconvertible time


I have tried restarting both Calibre and my Kindle, but if necessary I'll uninstall and reinstall Calibre and the plugin, as much as I would rather not.

[ReginaR]

Hi, I have the most recent version of Calibre, when I follow the instructions in the very first post, after I have clicked on add new plug in, I can't locate (or know how to locate), "Browse to and select the Kindle Collections.zip file,". Can someone help me? Thanks.

[CWatkinsNash]

I installed the latest version of the plugin today with calibre 0.8.3. I had made some widespread tag changes, so I cleared my collections.json and started from scratch. After a restart, the collections don't sort the way they did before. They are alphabetical but it no longer considers punctuational prefixes. For ex:

--Anthologies
Auth: Stephen King
Auth: Richard Kadrey
--Drama & Poetry

... and later...

--Romantic Suspense
--Science Fiction
Series: Dean Koontz's Frankenstein
Series: The Dresden Files
--Short Fiction: Horror

It used to sort the dash prefixes first, then regular letters. (So all --tag, then Auth:___, then Series:____) The version I used before this was the first one that required 0.8.2, whichever that was. Am I missing something? I'm pretty sure I'm not doing anything differently.

[nynaevelan]

Originally Posted by ReginaR

Hi, I have the most recent version of Calibre, when I follow the instructions in the very first post, after I have clicked on add new plug in, I can't locate (or know how to locate), "Browse to and select the Kindle Collections.zip file,". Can someone help me? Thanks.

You have to browse to where you saved it on your hard drive, do you remember where you saved it??

[ReginaR]

Originally Posted by nynaevelan

You have to browse to where you saved it on your hard drive, do you remember where you saved it??

Yes but the plug in file doesn't have it. Oh wait - i have to download this plug in separate from the regular calibre program? Sorry if that is the case, I should have realized.